Contents

Any player who is not currently online, or considered inactive, can be attacked. Players from the same alliance can only perform test attacks that will not yield any gold, medals, or trophies. If someone in your alliance tests your defenses, you will not receive a message about it.

To find a suitable target, players can click on the crossed swords on the main screen. The game then suggests a target +400 or -400 trophies from the player's current trophy level. The suggested opponent can be attacked or a new suggestion can be requested.

Besides asking the game for a suggestion, all player names throughout the game have crossed swords besides them - allowing them to be selected to be attacked. Any player from the scores list, a tournament, the favorites list, and the attack history can be selected. An attack will be rejected if the selected opponent is online. In most cases this is true, however, this message can also appear if the opponent has upgraded to a newer version of the game and the player hasn't yet. In rare cases it's also possible that an opponent is always reported as online and simply cannot be attacked by the player.

To attack a base more often than once a player can be added to the 'favorites' list. An opponent can only be attacked three times in a short period of time.

To start an attack requires food. The cost increases with the hero's level, peaking at 220 food for level 93.

Requesting a new suggestion for a player to attack costs gold, and this also depends on the hero's level. At level 100, a new suggestion costs 4,500 gold. This cost can be bypassed by attempting to attack an online player. After failing to attack the online player, you will have a new suggested player for a random match.

Before an attack, the maximum amount of gold, medals, and trophies are displayed. This is what a player gets for a full 100% victory. If an attack does not succeed, the reward depends on how far the attacker progressed towards the 100%. Gold and medals are awarded proportionally, meaning a 50% victory will yield 50% of the gold and medals. For trophies there is no way to know in advance what happens in the event of a partial victory. Depending on the opponent and the outcome, it is possible to receive less or even lose some trophies.

During an attack, the amount of gold the attacker has already secured is shown, as well as a bar that visually represents the victory percentage. In general, to get to a 100% victory, the attacker has to destroy every building and the castle gate itself. However, there are different sub-goals that advance the victory percentage.

The exact formula seems to depend on the complexity of the defense and therefore may be different for smaller defenses or defenses which stay below the currently possible maximums of towers, obstacles, or the path length. The following seems to be accurate for defenses around a level 8 castle gate (13-14 towers, 8-10 barricades and traps, path length of 25 or 27):

Razing towers, barricades, and traps yields up to 35%. Each structure is worth the same, so the contribution of a single structure is 35% divided by the total number of structures. At a full base with 13 obstacles and 17 towers, each structure is worth 1.17%.

Bringing the hero to the castle square yields 25% of the victory percentage in three equal steps. A third is awarded after a third of the way; another third is awared after two thirds of the way. The last third is awared when the hero reaches the middle of the castle square. It is not necessary to touch the castle gate itself.

It is important to note that it is the player's hero who has to reach these points to advance the victory percentage. Troops alone won't do. However, when troops alone manage to destroy the castle gate, a 100% victory is still possible.

Knowing what will advance the victory percentage allows a player to prioritize his or her actions. This usually becomes important when the time runs out. At this point, the following considerations should be made:

Reaching another waypoint (like the castle square) often has the biggest effect (8.33%).

The hero usually has a hard time damaging the castle gate. It may be more effective to destroy a tower next to the gate.

It's not always possible to destroy the castle gate, but the reward is massive. If the game reports a 75% victory this means that the castle gate was just about to fall. The difference between the 74.99% (reported as 75%) and 100% is actually tiny. When in doubt it is generally better to ignore a tower next to gate and focus all your energy there. Besides its big impact on the victory percentage, bringing down the castle gate is also needed to enter the Chamber of Fortune after the battle.

Even if destroying the castle is out of the question, damaging it still advances the victory percentage a little. This is why the hero should focus on the gate instead of troops when the time runs out. Even spells with little effect on the gate (like Swordrain) should be used.

If the castle gate or another waypoint is out of reach, destroying structures is always better than nothing. However, only the destruction counts. Damage alone is irrelevant.

While these considerations won't help much to win the battle itself, they certainly help to get the most out of an attack.

In the early days of the game it made a big difference whether a structure survived the attack. This is why many players placed a tower right next to the gate so that it would be ignored by troops. If the gate fell and the tower still stood, the attacker was only awarded a partial victory, far below 100%. This is no longer the case: Such a victory would now be 98% or 99%. However, this can still have a bigger effect on trophies: If a full victory would only award zero or one trophy, a 98% victory is likely to come out below.

In addition to the available gold and medals displayed before, bonuses may be added after an attack. For gold, the bonuses from the attacker's items and alliance are added. For medals, a bonus can be added depending on the attacker's rank. The following formulas apply:

When you are attacked, you receive a message when you next start up the game. You see the number of times you have been attacked and how many gold you lost. If someone used a revive potion, you receive some gems (or 1) too. You see the average number of crowns your attacker(s) achieved too. You also get the option to have revenge! Or you can choose to do that later (in the History tab).

If you log on whilst you are under attack, you will see a sign that looks like the normal attacking sign in the left top corner, next to your amount of gold. When you click on it, you see the girl who leads you through the game swearing something and saying how much gold they are trying to get. When the attack is over, you see how much gold you managed to save.